Barry Harris

Born on December 15, 1929, in Detroit, Michigan, Barry Harris was a jazz pianist, bandleader and composer who performed and recorded with many great bebop artists such as Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, and Coleman Hawkins. Known for his interpretations of the works of the pianist Thelonious Monk, he was labeled ‘keeper of the bebop flame’ and was active as a jazz educator for most of his career. He was born in a poor neighborhood in Detroit where every school had musical instruments that students could borrow to play gigs on weekends. Influenced early on by Monk and Bud Powell, he remained in the Michigan city area throughout the 1950s working with artists including Davis, Thad Jones, and Sonny Stitt. After stints playing with Max Roach and Cannonball Adderley, he moved to New York City in 1960 where he made records and performed with stars including Dexter Gordon, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet, Yusef Lateef and Hank Mobley. Concert tours in Europe and Asia kept him busy performing throughout the 1970s. In the 1980s, he began to focus on education: for five years, he ran New York's Jazz Cultural Workshop. In the 1990s, he created a series of books and videos on musical technique with Canadian musician and educator Howard Rees, famous for his own Jazz Workshops in Toronto. Harris made his first appearance on record on Hank Mobley's 1956 album Mobley's Message and his many releases since have included Barry Harris at the Jazz Workshop (1960), Chasin' the Bird (1962), Magnificent (1969), Interpretations of Monk Vol. 1 (1997) and Complete Live in Tokyo (2008). Barry Harris died on December 8, 2021, from complications from COVID-19.